'Exceptionalism': America’s war on freedom and the rise of the libertarians

Claiming to be “exceptional” suggests to everyone else that we are not really, that we are insecure, that we are reactive, reactionary and that we have just got here, to a world of Strangers and Others that has already been here for tens of thousands of years. Like that claim to be the world’s “oldest constitutional democracy,” it's a play on words. Better than self-governing Switzerland, no? Better than parliamentary systems with benign monarchs like England or Canada in which towns, states, cantons and provinces have a greater say in their governance? Better than Thailand, which rightly asks today, what will become of us when the aging King Bhumibol passes on? Will we be then only an insipid economic zone, a mall and trendy trattoria territorialized and dominated by the exceptional Americans?

We actually ask the candidates: “Do you believe that America is “exceptional?” Does Obama, like the foreign devil, not believe that America is “exceptional?" Do you?

Finally, someone speaks up. Pat Buchanan on “The McLaughlin Group” said other countries are “sick of hearing Americans” calling themselves exceptional. And so are Bill and Ted.

Jeff Poor reports on The Daily Caller that Buchanan said: “From the hysterical reaction in this city [Washington, D.C.] to Putin’s op-ed piece, he put this one right down the smokestack. What he did is he keyed off what Obama said on exceptionalism and he countered it with an argument which people all over the world believe. They are sick of hearing Americans talk about ‘we are the indispensable nation,’ as Madeline Albright said. ‘We see further than ours, that’s why we can use force.’ ‘We are the sheriff of the world, we are first, we are leaders.’ He’s not only appealing to the people of the world, he is appealing to that half of the United States to whom Barack Obama himself was appealing. So, I think he hit home.”

“Exceptionalism” is a call to circle the wagons for a threatened and insecure political entity. It is merely provincialism, an archaic remnant of worn through traditions and ideologies, parties and political generations which are descending quickly now to monarchist tendency. But in the last 10 years it has perhaps sponsored the rise of libertarianism and guiding lights today like Sens. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Mike Lee (R-Utah). Libertarians bring a threat and a challenge as they call forth today Jefferson and potentially Ralph Waldo Emerson, the best lights in our history in North and South.